SpaceX successfully launched its commercial rocket today marking the first time a private company has sent a spacecraft to the space station. The Falcon 9 rocket along with the Dragon capsule is loaded with the hopes and dreams of hundreds of students from around the USA.

The SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket has launched successfully, carrying the Dragon spacecraft into orbit. Dragon is the first private spaceship in history. It would be able to carry seven astronauts to orbit.

On April 30, 2012, if everything checks out, SpaceX will send an unmanned Dragon capsule, launched from its own rocket, to dock with the International Space Station. If successful, this would mark the first time a privately-owned spaceship docks with a space station in orbit. And it will pave the way for private, manned space travel.

From The New York Times: "In New Space Race, Enter the Entrepreneurs": Four years from now, the company plans for real modules to be launched and assembled into the solar system’s first private space station. "Every astronaut we have come in here just says, ‘Wow,’ ” said Robert T. Bigelow, the company founder. “They can’t believe the size of this thing.”

A team of Danish volunteers has built a rocket capable of carrying a human into space, and will be launching it in a week’s time. The project, which has been funded entirely by donations and sponsorship, is led by Kristian von Bengtson and Peter Madsen.

The company Planetary Resources plans to develop and launch a series of robotic systems and unmanned spacecraft, starting with its Arkyd-100 Earth-orbiting space telescopes that it hopes to launch by the end of 2013 to identify candidate near-Earth asteroids containing natural resources. A single 500-meter platinum-rich asteroid would have the equivalent of all the platinum-group metals ever mined on Earth, the company said. And the right 80-meter asteroid would have more than $100 billion worth of materials, Anderson said.

LAPD show off two rocket launchers taken off the streets through their gun buy-back program. Only problem is that one was a spent tube which can't be reloaded, the other a fiberglass replica for training.

The idea for internetwork came from BBN, a private company. The rise of ISPs in the 1980s showed that other companies were willing to invest in this space. Once the home PC and dial-up services became available, people joined commercial networks by the millions. The economic incentives to connect those early networks probably would have resulted in something very much like today’s Internet even if the ARPANET had never existed.

"We aim to show the world that human space flight can be different from the usual expensive and government controlled project," the Copenhagen Suborbitals website states. "We are working fulltime to develop a series of suborbital space vehicles — designed to pave the way for manned space flight on a micro size spacecraft."